Canada Hill Foothill Cemetery (Pendam Tekalong)

Primary tabs

In the 1950s, a journey from Niah to Miri would take three or more days along a small jungle path by foot. Otherwise by boat, going down the Niah River that plied between Miri, Niah, Bekenu and Bintulu every week, takes up a whole day's journey. So a visit to the Miri Hospital, then located at the Miri peninsular tip at the coast, which was the nearest hospital for treatment was very a costly and inconvenient affair. Those who had died while seeking treatment or during the journey due to medical complications or sickness were buried at Pendam Tekalong, at the base of Canada Hill.

This old graveyard, consisting of mostly crude wooden constructions as markings for a burial used to exist at the foot hill of Canada Hill, by the roadside in front of the roundabout in the area directly facing the Pelita Tunku building. The graves were very old, with some constructed out nothing more than wood.

Some time around mid 2000s, permission was given to exhume the graves and to relocate them, to make way for underground pipework, a water drainage channel, widening of the roads and then the eventual the construction of the overpass. A proposed hotel would also be sitting on part of the site.

At the time of this writing, it was unclear where the cemetery was moved to, which at the time the newspapers reported whose affected families have had some compensation for the troubles. That in itself proved to be a bit of a headache as it was hard to trace families and records. However, the matter was settled and a new road was paved over the spot to bypass the roundabout southbound in the direction of the airport, and in 2008, an overpass over the roundabout northbound to the city.